Texas House Schedules Abortion Bill Vote

AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Texas legislators on Monday pushed on with efforts to pass new abortion restrictions they were prevented from passing last month, scheduling a House vote and beginning what promised to be a marathon public hearing about the legislation.

Activists for and against the proposed restrictions descended on the Capitol for the hearing. Anti-abortion demonstrators planned to stage a Capitol rally later Monday, and abortion rights activists planned to march through downtown Austin around the rally’s scheduled start time.

Gov. Rick Perry, who was in San Antonio to announce he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2014, has pledged the Legislature’s Republican majority will pass the new restrictions in the current 30-day special session. The House Calendars Committee met early Monday to schedule a Tuesday debate and vote on the measure.

The Senate Health and Human Service Committee began what promised to be a long public hearing on the bill, as more than 2,000 people — some of whom showed up before dawn — lined up before registration was cut off at 11 a.m. Nearly 400 people had signed up to give two minutes of testimony each by its 10 a.m. start and staff was still counting registration cards of those who wished to speak.

Last week, a House panel heard eight hours of testimony from about 100 witnesses, but cut off thousands more who had registered. Unlike the House, which has online registration, the Senate required witnesses to register in person.

Senate chairwoman Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said she was willing to allocate more time for testimony than the House did, but still needed to place a limit. She said the panel would not vote at the hearing’s conclusion.

“We’ll stay here the rest of the week if necessary,” to hear witnesses, Nelson said, promising there would be “no breaks.”

“We’re going to run straight through the night,” Nelson said.

Before any of them started, Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, called abortion an “American holocaust” and placed two pair of infant sneakers at his desk as a reminder of fetuses that were aborted before they could be born.

Activists from both sides — the anti-abortion faction in blue and the abortion rights faction in orange — roamed the hallways, packed waiting rooms and waited for their chance to speak. Security was tight, but the gathering lacked the tension of a protest at a similar House hearing last week, when demonstrators chanted, sang and prayed their way around crowded hallways.

Once testimony began, the panel alternated between allowing bill supporters and opponents to speak. Nelson quickly cut off witnesses at their two minutes and kept the proceeding moving.

The House and Senate bills would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require that the procedure be performed at ambulatory surgical centers, mandate that doctors who perform abortions obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles and that even nonsurgical abortions take place in a surgical center.

Only five out of 42 clinics in Texas qualify as ambulatory surgical centers, and they are in major metropolitan areas. Many clinics would need to relocate to meet ventilation requirements and to have the space required for operating rooms and hallways.

Opponents of the bill say the new requirements are unnecessary and would force most Texas abortion clinics to close. Supporters of the bills say they want to reduce access to abortion and improve women’s health care. Texas health officials report that 72,240 abortions performed in the state in 2011, including 374 that happened after 20 weeks.

The 20-week ban is based on a claim that a fetus can feel pain by that point and thus, deserves protection from abortion. Other states have passed similar fetal pain restrictions, including some that are being challenged in court, but Texas has been at the center of the national abortion debate since a Democratic state senator succeeded in preventing the Legislature from passing the new restrictions last month by staging a nearly 13-hour filibuster on the session’s last day.

Perry called lawmakers into a new 30-day special session to take up the bill again. An abortion-rights rally on July 1 drew thousands of demonstrators on both sides to the Capitol.